QView Latency Optics News Round Up

Transcription

1 QView Latency Optics News Round Up Automated Trader NASDAQ OMX Access Services Enhances QView Latency Optics Web-based tool leverages Corvil to provide transparency around trading performance The NASDAQ OMX Group has announced the enhancement of QView Latency Optics, a web-based tool designed to give customers a view of their firm's trading activity, which will now provide performance measurement details and diagnostic tools in the form of on-demand historical packet capture files, or PCAPs. QView Latency Optics provides transparency into the NASDAQ OMX Data centre infrastructure so market participants may monitor the full lifecycle and latency of their orders with The NASDAQ Stock Market infrastructure. The diagnostic data is powered by Corvil, the provider of high-velocity data acquisition and analysis platforms that capture and transform data in-motion into real-time operational intelligence. Using QView Latency Optics, customers receive an overview of measurements in microseconds for the entire roundtrip of an order as it travels through the NASDAQ network. Measurements are broken down into categories including Order to Ack, which is the time it takes for the acknowledgement to be received back from the matching engine; Order to Book, which is the time it takes for the order to be displayed on the TotalView ITCH multicast feeds; and Cancel to Out, which is the time it takes for the cancel acknowledgement to be received. Firms may view overall session latency for the current trading day, detailed timetables with interactive graphs for a more granular examination of session flow, and percentile charts for each measurement category for a holistic view of the day's trading. The tool may be used for diagnostics data as firms have the ability to compare their latency to that of their peers for a given connectivity method. In addition, firms may analyze trends utilizing latency categories by percentile and further specify by time interval. Stacie Swanstrom, Head of Access Services at NASDAQ OMX, said, "This solution, which provides transparency into the most liquid market in the U.S., is also another way the Access Services business uses economies of scale to provide value to our customers." She added, "The QView Latency Optics tool enhances our ecosystem at the NASDAQ OMX Data centre as it provides a convenient, singular view of order and latency info for our customers." Markets Media Nasdaq Boosts Latency Monitoring Service Nasdaq OMX has enhanced QView Latency Optics, a web-based tool designed to give customers a view of their firm s trading activity, which will now provide performance measurement details and diagnostic tools in the form of on-demand historical packet capture files, or PCAPs, where they can be used to provide performance measurement details and diagnostic tools. The overall goal in Access Services is to be the first, as well as best in class in providing technology and tools that will continue to assist market participants and make our data center and our markets the preferred liquidity hub, said Stacie Swanstrom, head of access services at Nasdaq OMX.

2 QView, which was launched last year, is a web-based tool designed to give a subscribing member the ability to track its order flow on Nasdaq, and create both real-time and historical reports of such order flow. Using QView, subscribers can track all of their trading activity on NASDAQ s markets through detailed order and execution summaries available real-time or as historical reports, Swanstrom said. QView also includes ranking and market share statistics, routing and order summaries, port attributes and analytics such as time at the inside, fill rates and price improvement statistics. QView subscriber may subscribe to the Latency Optics add-on service, which is a web-based tool accessed through QView that provides the ability to monitor the latency of order messages through a firm s ports on the Nasdaq system in real-time, analyze the latency of messages sent to the Nasdaq system, and compare its latency to the average latency on the Nasdaq system at any given time. The diagnostic data is powered by Corvil, a provider of high-velocity data acquisition and analysis platforms that capture and transform data in-motion into real-time operational intelligence. Most network monitoring systems don t analyze the behavior of traffic or the network at the timescales relevant for low latency. In all parts of the network, transient congestion is the largest potential contributor to latency, said Donal O Sullivan, CEO of Corvil. Low-latency performance requires that dynamic congestion conditions can be detected and eliminated. Corvil addresses this by using an event-triggered packet capture facility which automatically records details about just those packets involved in unusual latency, loss, or network load events. This approach enables detailed analysis of anomalous conditions, without inundating users with irrelevant data, O Sullivan said. Event-triggered capture retains a configurable amount of data from each packet during an event, as well as a nanosecond precision timestamp and per-packet measurements including loss, latency, and bit-rate. Corvil packet captures are exported in the form of on-demand historical packet capture files, (PCAPs), to Nasdaq s QView Latency Optics. When market participants are experiencing latency issues, one of the biggest questions is whether there s a temporary congestion occurring during the transfer of information through different parts of the infrastructure, most importantly the gateway, O Sullivan said. The gateway supports many simultaneous sessions, and one of the key indicators is the speed and performance of the sessions on the gateway. Using QView Latency Optics, customers receive an overview of measurements in microseconds for the entire roundtrip of an order as it travels through the NASDAQ network. Firms may view overall session latency for the current trading day, detailed timetables with interactive graphs for a more granular examination of session flow, and percentile charts for each measurement category for a holistic view of the day s trading. The tool may be used for diagnostics data as firms have the ability to compare their latency to that of their peers for a given connectivity method. In addition, firms may analyze trends utilizing latency categories by percentile and further specify by time interval. Securities Technology Monitor Nasdaq Tool Lets customers Compare Speed of Orders to Rivals

3 By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld Nasdaq OMX Group said Wednesday that it had introduced a speed-tracking tool that would allow members of the Nasdaq Stock Market to gauge whether their orders are being processed as fast as those of all other buyers and sellers. The exchange operator said the latest version of a web-based tool it calls QView Latency Optics will provide brokers, market makers and trading firms complete measurements in microseconds of each order they place and compare them to the speeds being achieved by market participants as a whole. They ll be able to see where they sit relative to their peers. Not relative to a specific peer, but collectively, said Stacie Swanstrom, head of access services at NASDAQ OMX. But, by benchmarking how fast their orders get acknowledged compared to peers, how fast they get onto the order book and how fast cancellations are acknowledged, stock market members can figure out whether their instructions are getting through their own systems as well as Nasdaq s as fast as, faster or slower than rivals. If you ve gone up (in microsecond averages) and no one else has gone up, you ve distinctly got a problem on your end, said Donal Byrne, the chief executive of Corvil, the Dublin, Ireland, firm that is providing the basic latency monitoring technology for the service. The system will work by providing users with on-demand historical packet capture files on each order that they can use to analyze what s happening as an order moves into and through Nasdaq s network. The files will show exactly what Nasdaq is seeing. So, by subtracting Nasdaq s data from its own data, the user can see whether all, some or part of any delays are happening on its own network or Nasdaq s network. Then, the user can drill down, working with Nasdaq, to identify and remove bottlenecks or address problems. Measurements will be broken down into three categories: Order to Ack, which tracks the time it takes for an acknowledgement to be received back from the exchange s matching engine; Order to Book, which is the time it takes for the order to be displayed on a Nasdaq market data feed; and Cancel to Out, which is the time it takes for a cancellation to be received. The numbers are then compared to the results being achieved for all market participants on the relevant network speed being employed. Nasdaq customers can send messages on 1 billion bit, 10 billion bit and 40 billion bit a second pipes. The benchmarking is against all messages occurring on the same pipe that a customer is using. That allows a trading firm or market maker to see if latency is going up at the same rate for all participants or is it just me?, said Byrne. The tool gives the kind of transparency that will isolate any particular delay and allow troubleshooting to take place, Swanstrom said. There s still finger pointing, Byrne said. But we think all the fingers will be pointing in the same direction. The spikes at right show incidents warranting review. The table at left shows latencies at different steps. Drilling to next level shows how those speeds compare, in percentiles, to rivals. Troubleshooting begins. omx now offers packet capture tra/

4 Wall Street & Technology Nasdaq OMX Now Offers Packet Capture Trading Data Through QView Latency Optics By Greg MacSweeney Wall Street firms have collectively invested billions in their trading systems infrastructure, hoping to reduce latency and get the best execution for their orders. However despite cutting edge servers, optimized code and the fastest connections, bottlenecks can, and do, occur. When a suspected problem occurs, it's necessary to track it down to see if it is something that needs attention, or it is just the way the market are behaving at that point in time. With this in mind, Nasdaq OMX Group's QView Latency Optics tool now provides performance measurement details and diagnostic tools in the form of on-demand historical packet capture files (PCAPs). QView Latency Optics is a web-based tool designed to give users a view of their firm s trading activity. According to Nasdaq OMX, QView Latency Optics users receive an overview of measurements in microseconds for the entire roundtrip of an order as it travels through the Nasdaq network. Measurements are broken down into categories including Order to Ack (acknowledgement), which is the time it takes for the acknowledgement to be received back from the matching engine; Order to Book, which is the time it takes for the order to be displayed on the TotalView ITCH multicast feeds; and Cancel to Out, which is the time it takes for the cancel acknowledgement to be received. "Some [financial firms] have the ability to do this type of monitoring with their own technology," said Stacie Swanstrom, Head of Access Services at Nasdaq OMX in an interview with Wall Street & Technology. "However, QView is a diagnostic tool that provides benchmarking against everyone on the network." The benchmarking capability allows the user to compare a firm's metrics with that of the larger marketplace, says Swanstrom, adding that other firms may not have that capability with their own systems. For instance, if a particular customer was receiving slower than normal order acknowledgements, it could compare its latency against the entire marketplace. If the latency was equal to what the entire market experienced, then there is nothing to worry about. But if the latency was higher than the market average, the firm may have a problem with its feeds or technology.

5 Qview Latency Optic customers can view the minimum, maximum and average latency, displayed in round-trip microseconds, for any connection on the network. Firms may view overall session latency for the current trading day, timetables with interactive graphs for a more granular examination of session flow, and percentile charts for each measurement category for a holistic view of the day s trading, according to Nasdaq OMX. The tool may be used for diagnostics data as firms have the ability to compare their latency to that of their peers for a given connectivity method. In addition, firms may analyze trends utilizing latency categories by percentile and further specify by time interval. In addition, as all firms are looking to reduce technology costs, many are turning to technology providers for help with certain functions, added Swanstrom. "We are continuing to see growing interest from our customers for value added services and technology," she said. "Often, we can provide these services at less expense than what they could do themselves." [For more on how exchanges and firms are utilizing cutting-edge technology to reduce latency, read: Nasdaq, CME Building Superfast HFT Link.] Nasdaq OMX QView is a web-based tool designed to give subscribers the ability to track participant order flow on The Nasdaq Stock Market. Using QView, subscribers can track all of their trading activity on Nasdaq s markets through detailed order and execution summaries available real-time or as historical reports. QView also includes ranking and market share statistics, routing and order summaries, port attributes and analytics such as time at the inside, fill rates and price improvement statistics. "This solution, which provides transparency into the most liquid market in the U.S., is also another way the Access Services business uses economies of scale to provide value to our customers," Swanstrom said in a statement. "The QView Latency Optics tool enhances our ecosystem at the Nasdaq OMX Data Center as it provides a convenient, singular view of order and latency info for our customers."

6 Waters Technology Nasdaq to Begin Displaying Customer Latency By Jake Thomases 17:51 Nasdaq OMX has partnered with Corvil, the Dublin-based latency monitoring specialist, to provide performance measurement details and diagnostic tools in the form of on-demand historical packet capture files. The enhancement to QView Latency Optics, the web-based tool released in February for tracking order flow, provides additional transparency into the Nasdaq data center infrastructure, so market participants can monitor order lifecycle and latency. "Most people have figured out that latency variability is like the weather - sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold, and you just need to dress appropriately, provided you're given the information," says Donal Byrne, CEO of Corvil, which is supplying the technology. Nasdaq QView users receive an overview of measurements in microseconds for the roundtrip of an order as it travels through the exchange network. Measurements are broken down into categories including: Order to Ack, which is the time it takes for the acknowledgement to be received back from the matching engine; Order to Book, which is the time it takes for the order to be displayed on the TotalView ITCH multicast feeds; and Cancel to Out, which is the time it takes for the cancel acknowledgement to be received. Firms may view overall session latency for the current trading day, timetables with interactive graphs for a granular examination of session flow, and percentile charts for each measurement category for a holistic view of the day's trading. The tool may be used for diagnostics data as firms have the ability to compare their latency to that of their peers for a given connectivity method. Though individual peer latency is not visible, mean latency for a given peer group - 1Gb network, 10Gb network, etc - is. In addition, firms may analyze trends utilizing latency categories by percentile and further specify by time interval. Nasdaq customers had been asking for a clearer view of where their latency stood compared to other users, says Stacie Swanstrom, head of access services at the exchange. Byrne says Nasdaq is the first to offer such transparency. "It's one thing to recognize that you're having a latency issue with your trading strategy, but what people really want to know is what the root cause is, and is there anything more sinister going on," Byrne says. "The only way to get that is to get the associated data with the anomalous event. There are an awful lot of folks today interested in understanding the orderly operations of their trading strategy instead of just speed."